DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPUTERISED DATA WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR RECORDING ACCIDENT CASES IN NIGERIA

1. INTRODUCTION

The dictionary defines accident as “an unexpected and undesirable event, a mishap, unforeseen and without apparent cause. The mounting toll of Road Traffic Accident (RTA) deaths in Nigeria has public health problem, which requires urgent attention since these deaths are preventable. The pattern of scold sustained in these fatalities has however been focused on RTA in this country, since the early seventies when concerned citizens advocated the setting up of road traffic marshals corps in the old western state of Nigeria. This metamorphosed into the traffic warden popularly called ‘yellow fever’ body in this country owed to the colour of their uniform. legislation in 1988 led to the setting up of Federal Road Safety commission (FRSC).The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) was established by the government for the federal republic of Nigeria vide Decree 45 of 1988 as amended by Decree 35 of 1992, with effect from 18th February, 1988. The commission was charged with responsibilities for among others policy making, organization and administration of road safety in Nigeria.

It is frequently stated in literature that many developing countries have insufficient data on accidents (Jacobs and Sayer, 1983; Mohan, 1997.)

Mohan,(1984) estimated that only one-third of deaths from injuries were recorded in official statistics. Hospitals that record cases which reaches the hospital and may not be necessarily be the most severe.

Udomah and Edafiogho(1990),says that police records in Nigeria, regrettably published statistics that may be unsatisfactory from the research standpoint because if incomplete reporting, inaccuracies, varying definitions of accident and injury. Research would be useful to find improved ways of record keeping and co-ordination of existing records which will provide useful data for health promotion activities. Today in Nigeria, death by accidents far exceed those by any communicable diseases in the country, road accident have been recognized as a major public health problem in Nigeria for some time (Asogwa,1978).

1. BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Observations have shown that cases of accident in Nigeria don’t have a record after it has occurred. With the manual process involved in handling the accident cases records, most of the patients spend their whole day in the hospital waiting to be attended to, at the end of which some do not even get medical attention. It is quite obvious that doctors and other medical staff needs a helper-someone or an aid that may be of help to them to remember cases of accident, what happened to the victims and the necessary approach to the conditions.

It is also evident that the National Population Commission (NPC) also needs a better approach to record keeping of the population of the nation and also to measure   the mortality rate and sorts of that which collectively helps in knowing the population status of a nation or a locality. This is essential because it is a factor which contributes to certain decision that may take place at any point in time

As a result of these factors, this project work has been designed to bring some sorts of improvements in the way record keeping of the accident cases should be made to ameliorate the situation of the manual way of record keeping.

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

It is crystal clear that an efficient record keeping mechanism is needed in Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) to enable them take proper record of accident cases about a particular area which will at the long run help them also in knowing the various causes of the various accident incidences, how fatal it is, and how many individual (male, female, men, women, boys, girls, etc) that are involved and the various factors responsible to the accident occurrences. This has been lacking in the Federal Road Safety Commission of the nation and at this note is the problem that the study of the project aims at repositioning to make things be as it should.

1.3 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

It has been said that “information is life” and from all aspects, no entity can exist and survive the times when there is no proper way of getting robust information for its up keeping. The study of this project is most significant in the area of record keeping of the accident cases and causes which is a very good source of data for computation in the National Population commission and in nation’s budgeting. Also it will help in keeping record of the various frequent causes of road accident so as to know the channel by which the government of the area will go in order to put to stop those various causes of accident.

1.4 AIMS/OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The very aim/objective of this study is to develop an efficient way of record keeping using the rubrics of database (set of integrated files) in the Federal Road Safety Commission. This is most accomplished by developing a data warehouse- for accident cases and causes.

1.5 SCOPE OF STUDY

As can be deducted from the topic of this study – design and development of data warehouse for accident cases and causes for road safety in Nigeria – the researcher narrows her research towards developing the data warehouse for accident cases and causes only, pinpointing the various causes most accident that occurs on the Nigerian road, designing a database software that  will help in making the recording keeping of the cases and causes of accident which incorporates the common database operations like querying for a particular set of field or range of certain entities. The scope of the study encompasses the above mentioned featured which are what the researcher deemed necessary to be part of the end product of her research